March Madness is officially here! You can pick your NCAA Tournament bracket based on mascots, based on your limited knowledge of most of the teams ... or you can trust science that's been proven to work.
The last two years, SportsLine's computer simulation correctly predicted nine out of 12 double-digit NCAA Tournament upsets in the first round, including 11-seed Xavier, 12-seed Middle Tennessee State, 13-seed Hawaii and 14-seed Stephen F. Austin.
Their model was also a stellar 27-5 picking games in the opening round last year. So yeah, it's probably worth your time to take a look before you fill out your bracket.
They ran thousands of simulations this year to come up with the perfect 2018 NCAA Tournament bracket, and find out which teams will pull off the biggest upsets.
What they found: 7-seed Arkansas falls to 10-seed Butler in the first round. The Bulldogs take this matchup outright in over 62 percent of simulations.
Butler comes into the postseason with three losses in their last four games and squeaked into the NCAA Tournament with an underwhelming 20-13 mark overall. But they provide major matchup issues for Arkansas, who has one of the worst defenses in the nation at 75.5 points per game allowed.
Butler averages nearly 80 points on offense and has an elite scorer in Kelan Martin, who's scoring 20.8 points per game. The Razorbacks were bounced from the SEC Tournament because they let Tennessee shoot nearly 65 percent from beyond the arc, and the model is predicting another defensive breakdown.
Back Butler, a program that has won at least one game in its last six NCAA Tournament appearances, to knock off Arkansas.
Another huge curveball: 14-seed Stephen F. Austin shocks the college basketball world again with a huge upset over Texas Tech. The Lumberjacks are no strangers to creating havoc in March. They have four appearances in the NCAA Tournament since 2009, and they knocked off 5-seed VCU in 2014 and 3-seed West Virginia in 2016.
The Red Raiders could be added to that list this year. They've lost five of their last seven games coming into the 2018 NCAA Tournament and had very few quality wins in the second half of the season.
Texas Tech relied on its shutdown defense all season, but that will be stretched in a huge way by the Lumberjacks, who average over 80 points and have three players who shoot over 40 percent from behind the arc. They're a 2018 NCAA Tournament upset pick you need to be all over.
SportsLine's model also has one region where you need to pick the 11, 12, and 13 seeds, and another region with a 4-seed in the Final Four. Nailing those picks could literally make or break your bracket.
So what's the optimal NCAA Tournament 2018 bracket? And which underdogs shock college basketball? Visit SportsLine to see the optimized NCAA Tournament bracket, and see which underdogs to lock in now, all from the model that nailed nine of 12 upsets by double-digit seeds the last two years.
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